Talk:Waterloo campaign

Text copied from elsewhere?

The style of much of this article is that of a nineteenth century military history. Much of the text appears to have been copied, although from what source is not clear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:1432:DE00:D8B3:87F0:FFA0:7A30 (talk) 12:15, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

it is clear. see the sources cited under "Attribution" in the References section of the article. -- PBS (talk) 11:20, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Interlude

Back in December 2014 I added details copied from the EB1911 article into the section "Interlude". Today I have rewritten the section with text copied form the leads of the detailed articles Waterloo Campaign: Quatre Bras to Waterloo and Waterloo Campaign: Ligny through Wavre to Waterloo. I have done this because when created the original expansion the two detailed articles had not been written. Now that they exist I do not think think that there is need for so much detail in this article (summary style). -- PBS (talk) 13:36, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

This article is historically weak

This article has numerous errors and is worthless.

Its needs to be rewritten from scratch.

Who is responsible for this?

Just as an example, consider this paragraph, which is describing the situation prior to crossing the Sambre.

Napoleon moved the 128,000 strong Army of the North up to the Belgian frontier. The left wing (I and II Corps) was under the command of Marshal Ney, and the right wing (III and IV Corps) was under Marshal Grouchy. Napoleon was in direct command of the Reserve (Imperial Guard, VI Corps, and I, II, III, and IV Cavalry Corps). During the initial advance all three elements remained close enough to support each another.

Categorically false.

Ney had no command on prior to crossing the Sambre. Grouchy was in charge of the Reserve Cavalry Corps.

This is one of more examples than I can count.

Absolutely worthless article. stephen.beckett@comcast.net

07:21, 5 January 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.125.108.228 (talk)

For "who is responsible for this" see the "View history" tab at the top of the article. Or, in a broader sense Wikimedia Foundation.

WP, like history, is made by the people who show up, and if you want, you can help. I suggest you do it one small piece at a time, perhaps focus on one section until you think it's ok. You can WP:BOLDLY edit the paragraph you quoted, take the time to read WP:Reliable sources and Help:Referencing for beginners and get into it. WP has a lot of strange policies and guidelines, but if you stick around, you will pick them up as you go along. I also suggest you register as a user, it makes communication with other editors easier in the long run (WP:REGISTER). Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history may be a good place to ask for input, this article may not have a lot of "watchers". Good luck! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:57, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

This article is a summary article if you wish to read the the details of 15 June 1815 then read Waterloo Campaign: Start of hostilities. While what you say is true, Ney did not take command of the left wing of the army until towards the end of the first day and Grouchy the right wing until the 17 June. As a summary it is not so inaccurate. Changing the wording to be more accurate can be tricky if it is to remain a summary without too much detail. However the text is open to anyone to edit ... -- PBS (talk) 12:18, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

@PBS - as a summary, it is utterly inaccurate - here is a strong recommendation for a summary: don't include demonstrably false statements. Ney and Grouchy are not necessary to mention in a summary, and if they are, one can easily be accurate with both Grouchy and Napoleon's command. There is no excuse for this, and it is not tricky at all. What is true, from reading the texts of Wikipedia's Waterloo Campaign coverage is that the authors do not have sufficient knowledge of the campaign. Where is the discussion of the events of June 10 and June 12? My guess - none of the authors even know what happened on those days. Pierre de Wit and I have covered this in detail - the sourcing exists, the authors need to find it. The discoveries of the last 5 years are no where to be found in these articles. The sourcing in all the articles is out of date and mostly obsolete. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.125.108.228 (talk) 06:02, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

@24.125.108.228 (talk · contribs · count) sorry I did not see this post because using just my user name without a link to my acount does not ping me. So here is a beleted reply. you wrote "Where is the discussion of the events of June 10 and June 12? My guess - none of the authors even know what happened on those days." as I said before (by with a link to the section) please see Waterloo campaign: start of hostilities#Start of operations (8–12 June). -- PBS (talk) 17:13, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 18 July 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved. Despite some strong opposition, the fall-out from which resulted in one opposer being blocked, there is consensus with evidence that, according to our naming conventions, the "Campaign" should be decapitalised. The "subtitle" part of the titles are also to be decapped, so it will be Waterloo campaign: start of hostilities and Waterloo campaign: peace negotiations.  — Amakuru (talk) 19:11, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

---

• Waterloo Campaign → Waterloo campaign
• Waterloo Campaign: Start of hostilities → Waterloo campaign: Start of hostilities
• Waterloo Campaign: Peace negotiations → Waterloo campaign: Peace negotiations
• Waterloo Campaign: Waterloo to Paris (2–7 July) → Waterloo campaign: Waterloo to Paris (2–7 July)
• Waterloo Campaign: Waterloo to Paris (18–24 June) → Waterloo campaign: Waterloo to Paris (18–24 June)
• Waterloo Campaign: Waterloo to Paris (25 June – 1 July) → Waterloo campaign: Waterloo to Paris (25 June – 1 July)
• Waterloo Campaign: Ligny through Wavre to Waterloo → Waterloo campaign: Ligny through Wavre to Waterloo
• Waterloo Campaign: Quatre Bras to Waterloo → Waterloo campaign: Quatre Bras to Waterloo

– Waterloo campaign is not a proper name; that is, most sources don't cap campaign when referring to is as the Waterloo campaign. So per WP:NCCAPS and other policy and guideline sections, we should not be capping it. Dicklyon (talk) 22:52, 18 July 2019 (UTC) --Relisting.  — Amakuru (talk) 14:48, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). DannyS712 (talk) 21:27, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Copying discussion from request:

• Is this actually true? The list of high-quality sources at the end of this article actually seems to show it mostly using "Campaign" with a capital C. (I know that just Google n-grams argument is apparently satisfactory for the Wikipedia we hate all capital letters crew in previous similar RMs, but this particular case seems even more titled than usual that n-grams are probably wrong and the sources are right.) . Ping @PBS: who maintains / wrote a lot of this. SnowFire (talk) 18:45, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, it's true per books n-grams. Which referenced books did you check? The first few refs I checked either didn't use the term or used lowercase like here and here and here and here. Or mixed like in this one and this one. I haven't yet come to one that supports a proper name interpretation, so please point it out if you have. And I'm actually quite fond of capital letters, and use them all the time to indicate proper names, starts of sentences, title-case composition titles, etc. (in spite of the error in my username). Dicklyon (talk) 19:10, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

@PBS: again. This discussion moved. Dicklyon (talk) 03:35, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Survey

Note: User:MarcusBritish who opposed here has been indef blocked for his abusive comments related to this requested move at other discussions, so he will not be commenting further. Dicklyon (talk) 05:05, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

• Support as nom – No reason for caps here, since sources don't. Dicklyon (talk) 22:55, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

With this discussion open for 10 days already, only one source has been pointed out that treats "Waterloo Campaign" as a proper name (that is, caps it in non-title contexts). I'm sure there are a few more, but a nonspecific distrust of n-gram statistics is hardly a reason to ignore all the sources that lowercase "campaign". Contrary to SnowFire's claim, most sources cited in the article favor lowercase -- you just have to look beyond the titles to see that; I have provided the links. So the "oppose" votes still competely fail to point out a reason to cap here. Conversely, there is a very good reason to fix it; WP:NCCAPS says right at the front: "Do not capitalize the second or subsequent words in an article title, unless the title is a proper name. For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper name that would always occur capitalized, even mid sentence." Dicklyon (talk) 15:54, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Note – Now 25 days in, and still only 2 books by 1 author have been shown to treat "Waterloo Campaign" as a proper name (that is, capitalized in sentences). Of course others could be found, but the evidence of widespread lowercase is reliable sources being overwhelming, I can't see why this is still open. Dicklyon (talk) 21:07, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose per current references in article and Dicklyon's refcheck links above; please read a few. They read as favoring the capitalized form to me, although a few are mixed, and the titles of the cited works seem to use the capital letters as well. As per above & previous discussions, I feel the n-gram charts, which seem the main focus of these arguments, is not a relevant or useful source for figuring out capitalization style. SnowFire (talk) 04:40, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  In discussion below, you have not pointed out even a single cited source that reads "as favoring the capitalized form". Please point out a few, or retract your claim. Dicklyon (talk) 14:38, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  We disagree on what counts as "favoring the capitalized form". By your standard, you are surely correct that none do; by my standard, quite a few. Anyway, based off the recent 2006 book 1815, the Waterloo Campaign, all the references GBooks would let me see in the preview capitalized "Campaign", even in running text. For one example. (That said, to be clear, I am interested in what PBS has to say, who has read far more of the sources than either of us.) SnowFire (talk) 17:38, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, thank you for finally finding one book that treats is as a proper name! I too look forward to PBS's comments. Dicklyon (talk) 19:22, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  Turns out that author has a few more books on the topic, and I found capped "Waterloo Campaign" in a sentence in one other; it's probably in more, but it's hard to tell from the snippets. For example, this one only shows title and heading contexts in the snippets. This is the kind of book where the running heads provide a bunch of counts in the n-grams for caps. As Marcus points out, there are important biases in n-gram counts, and as BarrelProof points out the big one for this discussion is the over-counting of caps due to such headings (and citations to previous book titles, etc.). Dicklyon (talk) 16:14, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

• Support—there is utterly no risk of ambiguity by removing (in accordance with MOSCAPS) the "C". SnowFire's survey appears to have picked up lots of title-case usage—that is, IN titles. Tony (talk) 03:42, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - N-grams produce spurious results that don't tell the whole truth. Editors should perform some background research before accepting N-grams at face value. A simple Google search will show you why they are problematic, on a number of levels: https://www.google.com/search?q=google+n-grams+inaccurate My primary concern is that N-grams are just graphs without sources. That makes the data unverifiable, and that is against WP:V. — Marcus^(talk) 18:35, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment: Reviewing the criticisms described for N-grams, I don't see how any of them would apply in this case (except perhaps that the N-grams would probably mix both titles and body text into the search results, which could lead to an over-representation of capital letters due to being in the title of a creative work and thus using title case). I don't think it is valid to say that because N-grams are not good for some purposes, we shouldn't ever pay attention to any N-gram results. —BarrelProof (talk) 12:22, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Exactly, the most important known limitation of N-gram stats is working against Marcus's argument. Caps are generally over-counted with respect to the usage in sentences that our policy says to look at. Dicklyon (talk) 16:14, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
      • The onus is on you to prove such claims instead of just saying it does something in your favour and trying to bottleneck every discussion into a singular way of thinking N-grams are the miracle we need, when the truth is it's a Google cancer that needs to cease spreading. — Marcus^(talk) 20:05, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
        • I had not previously invoked that bias because there's no need to, with how clear the stats are. Nobody has alleged that N-grams overcount lowercase occurrences. If someone does, we might consider asking for proof, or evidence of some sort. Dicklyon (talk) 21:06, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
          • I doubt that you can prove N-grams under- or over-counts anything, with any degree of certainty. Simply because "campaign" is not a word you can identify as being associated with a means of biasing it, since it appears everywhere: in titles, in headings, in sentences, in indexes, in bibliographies, and it can also be both used as a verb or a noun, which N-grams also does not consider. If we take a word that should be receiving far more captalised counts than not, for example "chapter", since it appears so often at the lead of millions of book chapters, we should expect to see far, far more capital "Chapter" or even fully "CHAPTER" than "chapter". So why do these results surprise me? https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chapter&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cchapter%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3BCHAPTER%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bchapter%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BChapter%3B%2Cc0 and has been illustrated by third-party critics of N-grams, why in this set of results are there more "Figure" than "figure"? Not many sentences begin with "Figure" - overcounted? That would be the easy, unprovable, conclusion you'd probably make. I'll go with the more common and likliest issue: OCR can't always distinguish F from f, and I image the same goes for C and c. As well as many other letters, where the lowercase is not as distinguishable: Cc Ff Oo Pp Ss Uu Vv Ww Xx Zz. Yet, of all these letters, it is obvious that some are going to be more problematic than others depending on the word they lead, a word like "campaign". Google's algorithms and N-grams are just as fraught with inaccurate means of scanning and analysing books as any technology on Earth. And that's just the first of many problems and limitations with N-grams that I have been able to identify, that even you have no explanation for - at least none you can prove, because there are no absolutes here, you're dealing with a technology that, basically, theorises the data it gathers and spits out the crap you post under the claim "indisputable evidence". You over-emphasise Google's ability to scan all the books in the world far more than N-grams over-counts the tiny few it has. Sundar must be proud. — Marcus^(talk) 21:43, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
            • Those results surprise you because you ignored the context. Try this view or this view to see what's going on with Chapter. Or this for Figure. Get it? Here is the corresponding view for "Waterloo Campaign" vs "Waterloo campaign" (starting in 1890 to avoid the big bump in titles counted in the Longman Green & Co. catalog appendixes as I mentioned elsewhere). There are lots of variations you can; e.g. things like "of Cambridge" or "Toyota Camry" to see how often "Cam" might be misrecognized as "cam"; if you saw that happening, you could complain here about it; but it's not happening. Dicklyon (talk) 22:23, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
              • So, if ignoring context is wrong, why do you do it? At Talk:Bougainville_campaign#Requested_move_24_June_2019, for example, your N-grams for Bourgainville contained no contextual parameters. Why? Because with them you'd get no results: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Bougainville+Campaign+*%2CBougainville+campaign+*&year_start=1900&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3 and without results you can't move an article based on any supported claim; and that highlights one of the key problems with using N-grams as "evidence" on Wikipedia - if you can't get the results you want, first time round with a default search format, you have to manipulate the parameters. And that is what we call "bias" or synthesising. And you, as a researcher, should know this. If you offer results returned in a manner as you did at the Bourgainville RM and a different manner as you have for the Waterloo RM, you're essentialy cherry-picking the results that favourably support your argument. That is a POV, not a fact. That is why I have spent so much time arguing against N-grams, and will continue toargue against N-grams: because the temptation is there to pick-and-choose the results you want, to present them to RM as evidence, and hope for ignorant editors to accept them blindly, because N-grams requires a degree of technical manipulation, which a lot of editors don't understand or want to attempt, in order to challenge and oppose the results properly. And still, the mountain of concerns I have with N-grams have not been fully explained, from your examples, which only prove that evidence is only evidence when it speaks for itself, from genuine sources, not when it has to be interpreted from a set of data which no-one can verify. Do you even accept the importance of WP:V? It's a core policy, and despite the fact we have it, and MilHist is one of the best projects for enforcing the need to cite reliable refs, a great number of educational bodies disallow Wikipedia as a reference for its students. That doesn't mean students can't use Wiki to access referenced material used here, however. Do you think your use of a source that cannot be referenced or verified promotes the encyclopedic values of Wikipedia? When your evidence can't even jump the first hurdle, why do you expect us to take it at face value? That's precisly what I don't like about you – you quibble over trivial MOS guidelines, like NCCAPS, which are often conflicting or subjectively written and require consensual decisions on a case-by-case basis, yet you totally ignore core policy such as WP:V in order to promote N-grams. The onus has always been on you to satisfy us that campaigns should be moved, and to be frank, you've never done this in a a proficient, sincere or dignified manner, rather you've been misleading and subjective with the guidelines, the data and even the English language. Call me what you want, but I'm transparent, and always strive to find sources that represent my edits as accurately as possible. Go look at my personal library and article on Wellington's military career, if you doubt my ability to be resourceful and unbiased, and believe me, my anti-N-grams stance is not a personal bias, it reflects a genuine concern for its lack of qualitative data and transparency, amongst other things. Your emphasis appears to be quantitative, and I don't believe a great a deal of military history can be written by number crunching. In fact, I don't think N-grams can be of any benefit to the subject, period. — Marcus^(talk) 23:31, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
                • I don't ignore context when I can get it. In the case you mention, no trigram starting with Bougainville campaign made the cut of being found in at least 40 books, so wasn't in the stats database. On the other hand, one trigram ending in Bougainville campaign did make the cut; see. Yes, N-grams have their limits. As for your personal attacks against me, I shall just ignore. Dicklyon (talk) 23:49, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
                  • Calling someone rude/offensive names is a personal attack. Observing and describing their behaviour with a plethora of verbs is not. While you are free to deny engaging in such behaviour, you are not free to decide what is a personal attack and what is not. You should also note that WP:NPA does not consider it a personal attack to question someone's conflict of interest. I'm always suspicious of a Google employee flaunting Google data as factually sound, particularly one so resistant to criticism of that data as you are, especially when we don't know the level of involvement they may have with the team that produces such stats. — Marcus^(talk) 00:15, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
                    • For the record, I have no COI with respect to Google N-grams. It is not a project that I have been involved in or have any inside knowledge of. I only know what I read in the press. My work has been in sound/hearing and in Street View cameras, as you probably know. And I have never asked that the N-gram stats be taken as "fact" or "at face value"; they are just "data" or "evidence" to look at and discuss. If you have something to suggest a different outcome, let's air it. Dicklyon (talk) 00:51, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
                    • Also note that my case and punctuation fixing contributions on Wikipedia date from 2006 (e.g. see Gummel–Poon model, Auditory brainstem response, Grassmann's law, Tabular-grain film, Early effect (full disclosure: Jim Early was a friend of mine)), before there were Google n-grams. But yes there was Google book search already, and I found it quite useful. Dicklyon (talk) 02:14, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
                • Thanks for the link to your personal library – very impressive! I went through a few of the books about Napoleon and the Hundred Days and such, and so far haven't found one that treats "Waterloo campaign" as a proper name, from what I can see online. I'm not sure you've even claimed that most do, but if you wanted to check such a claim, you'd be in a good position to do so. It's really quite unclear to me why you are opposing fixing this; seems to be just a general unease about where the evidence comes from; you are well placed to provide better input to the process if you choose to. Dicklyon (talk) 02:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
                  • Because I don't think it needs fixing. Per my post at MOSCAPS, I consider a named Campaign a proper noun as much as any Battle of is treated as a singular event. "Fixing" would suggest it was broken or grammatically incorrect per something like the Oxford Dictionary, but as we have both noted, terms like this favour or trend towards one format or another and is ever fluctuating. I don't think, given a reaasonable amount of sources, you will ever find an overwhelming number that goes either way. Even Wellington used to write "the Campaign" in his dispatches published by Silbourne. Of course, you might argue that's pre-standardisation, but I simply believe every historian has a personal preference, regardless of anything else, and applies it to their work. In many cases we see mixed usage, such as Chandler, suggesting he just didn't give a shit; in his case I'd have to look at his consistency when naming other campaigns, besides Waterloo, such as 1812, Italy, Egypt, etc, before I could be certain whether he followed a standard. Getting a bigger picture instead of focusing on this campaign and that campaign, gives a broader picture. — Marcus^(talk) 17:32, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

• Weak support: There is some mixture in the sources. However, we should ignore what we find in the titles of sources, because many sources use title case for titles, whereas Wikipedia uses sentence case for the titles of its articles. Wikipedia guidelines also generally say that the rule of thumb is to use lowercase when there is doubt (e.g., per the opening sentence of MOS:CAPS: "Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization."). Looking at some of the sources cited in the article, I find that this one by Siborne uses the phrase "the heroic bravery displayed in this brief Campaign" in its preface and on page 49 talks about "the persecution of a vigorous Campaign", so its author is clearly an overcapper and I decided to look no further in that one (without ever encountering the phrase in its body); the 1911 Brittanica article uses "the Waterloo campaign" in its body text and thus favors the proposal; the von Clausewitz front matter seems to have both forms. Overall, the phrase was harder to find in the cited sources than I expected it to be. Cases like this one where the final word(s) of a phrase might or might not be part of a proper name seem to often be difficult judgment calls. I fail to see the case for ignoring the provided N-gram results which appear to favor lowercase. Again, when in doubt, Wikipedia guidelines prefer lowercase. —BarrelProof (talk) 12:52, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Support for move, to my experience the "campaign" here is a generic noun specify by "Waterloo", following style guide it appears to me it should be lower case. Xinbenlv(t) ^{please notify me with {{ping}}} 00:01, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. "Waterloo Campaign" was a particular event in history. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 15:28, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

  So was the fall of the Alamo a particular event in history. But it's not capped because it's not a proper name. Usually you support conforming to our style guidelines, if my observations are correct. Why not this time? Dicklyon (talk) 22:25, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

  The WP:COMMONNAME is Battle of the Alamo. Your fav. stats provider also shows it as the most widely used term, especially in recent years since circa 1980. "Fall" isn't really an independent event anyway, it's a consequence of the battle, although historians might refer to "fall of the Alamo" in the same way they'd say "the fall of Rome" or "the fall of Napoleon", because it concludes a notable period in history rather than a singular event. I can see why, in the case of "fall of..." events, most historians do not capitalise it, however, since writing about the end of an era is done in far broader strokes, often subjectively, than a single major event, such as a battle, which renders it a generic noun, and a bad example of an "event". PErsonally, I think "Fall of the Alamo" is a romanticized designation, and given that it was more commonly called that in the 1800s, I wouldn't be surprised if that was intentional – 1800s historians favoured a bit of pomp in their works. — Marcus^(talk) 08:32, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

"Waterloo campaign" implies it is not specific. On the other hand, "List of presidents" is non-specific, so I supported that title. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 13:46, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Lowercase has no such implication, as fall of the Alamo illustrates. Sources routinely use Waterloo campaign (as the evidence and survey of sources amply confirms) in reference to this campaign. Why would we not do the same? Does our manual of style say to cap things that refer to a specific event? No, it does not. Dicklyon (talk) 18:53, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

A specific event is a proper noun, and proper nouns are capitalized. Anyway, the article is not called "Fall of the Alamo" or "fall of the Alamo," but "Battle of the Alamo." --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 22:04, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't think you'll find anything like "A specific event is a proper noun" in any English grammar. Dicklyon (talk) 23:54, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

• Support per MOS:CAPS and WP:NCCAPS, which defers to MOS:CAPS where, Wikipedia relies on sources to determine what is conventionally capitalized; only words and phrases that are consistently capitalized in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources are capitalized in Wikipedia. Also, Wikipedia avoids unnecessary capitalization. By the latter, the burden is to show that capitalisation is necessary. The former quote states the criteria require, which is empirical evidence rather than any gramatical (onomastic) or orthographic "rule". The n-gram evidence shows that (or is very indicative of) capitalisation being unnecessary. I am not seeing any evidence of usage that would support retaining capitalisation (ie a substantial majority). On the arguement of WP:V to n-grams , WP:SOURCEACCESS does not require that the sources are accessible (viewable) through Google Books. Indeed, it is extremely rare for academic articles to include the raw data. As a tool, n-grams are verified by the two academic papers cited here. Also, per proper noun, proper nouns are not descriptive (X campaign is) and a unique or specific referent does not necessarily mean that a word/phrase is a proper noun/name. While MOS:CAPS relies on empirical evidence rather than a theoretical determination (ie rules of grammar), the rule-based critera cited above are not definitive. I note that the target names, "start of hosilities" and "peace negotiations", are not proper noun phrases and should also be decapped. Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 05:28, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

  I was allowing caps after colons; that is, sentence case for subtitles. Does MOS:CAPS or WP:NCCAPS address subtitles? Maybe we'll change per this suggestion. Dicklyon (talk) 15:37, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

• Support for compliance with MOS in the absence of evidence that this phrase is commonly used as a proper noun phrase. "N-grams are scary" and "this event existed" are not such evidence, and I don't see anything else in the discussions above and below. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:15, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

@SnowFire: Let us know if you found any of the cited sources supporting capitalizing Campaign. Dicklyon (talk) 04:02, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks for looking into this. I think n-grams is great for telling the difference between the usage in "foo" and "bar". I don't think n-grams is helpful for showing the difference between "foo" and "Foo", there's way too much possibility for error & misinterpretation, but this has been what most of your moves are based off of. For example, our Wikisouce Enyclopedia Britannica 1911 link shows "campaign" in lowercase in running text, e.g. "Napoleon now pondered over his plan of campaign," but the actual title of the event as a whole is "Waterloo Campaign" with a capital C. Aka exactly like all the many articles on campaigns on Wikipedia. There's a difference between Foo Campaign, the proper name, and just "campaign" in running text. It wouldn't shock me this is also what is throwing the n-gram results off. Anyway, I was mostly going off the titles of the references at the end of the article - yes, you can say that title case can be different, but hey, this is an article title too, so not really that different. Most of your sources also seem mixed at best. "The Battle: A New History of Waterloo" has a single instance of "Waterloo campaign" seemingly and is not referring to the event as a whole, but rather is just normal text. The "On Waterloo" website - well, this isn't a great source anyway since this is a website about an 1835 book published in German, but note that usage there is mixed, not straight lowercase as you claim - both "provided considerable advice as well as assistance with their extensive libraries on the Waterloo Campaign" and "articles on 19th-century Germany, NATO and the Cold War, and the Waterloo campaign of 1815." The EB1911 isn't favoring lowercase, it's capitalized as noted above. "Wellington as Military Commander" - that one seems mixed, but I'll give you that one as probably favoring lowercase. "The Campaigns of Napoleon" doesn't appear to be an on-point source, and the Waterloo lectures is mixed as you note. Basically this seems like a case of two people reading the same docs and coming to different conclusions - your links don't appear to support lowercase "campaign" to me for the specific "how to refer to the event as a whole" case, which is the relevant one. SnowFire (talk) 04:40, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  SnowFire, have you read WP:NCCAPS and WP:LOWERCASE and MOS:CAPS? It's precisely the use "in sentences" that matter to us, not the uses in title-case contexts such as titles and headings. I don't know what you're contrasting with when you say "the event as a whole". It sounds to me like you haven't found any that use "Waterloo Campaign" consistently in sentences; I'm sure there are some, but they are from being the norm. Dicklyon (talk) 14:32, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  E.g. you claim the EB1911 is capitalizing. That's wrong; they capitalize only in title context; in sentences, they don't cap "campaign" in "Waterloo campaign", indicating that they don't think it's a proper name. Most sources are like this. Dicklyon (talk) 15:00, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

You're using a different standard for capitalization expectations than I am. Capitalizing the normal word "campaign" in running text when simply talking about some sort of campaign is very rare; you're basically asking for something like how you'd capitalize God or He in running text when referring to divinity, a standard that would lead to almost all capital letters being decap'd that does not align with actual usage in Wikipedia, in literature, in journalism, etc. I linked some examples of capitalized "Campaign" above from your sources before. We can agree to disagree on how relevant they are, but to me it seems that "Waterloo Campaign" the titled entity is capitalized. If you don't understand what I mean by "the event as a whole", that is the key distinction here, at least to me: there is the proper noun and there is vanilla bog standard usage. Bank of America is a bank, the word bank is part of a title in the first and just the normal English usage in the second case. (No argument that running references to "campaign" in general are fine, of course, even when referring to Foo Campaign.) SnowFire (talk) 17:32, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the word campaign at all. I'm only looking at the phrases "Waterloo campaign" vs "Waterloo Campaign". Here are the stats links again: 1 2. Please review the sources for how these are used (in non-title / non-heading contexts) and see if you agree. I agree with you on "Bank of American" (as do stats [1]); it's not analogous to Waterloo campaign. Dicklyon (talk) 19:17, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I admit my wording was not clear enough; I clarified it in this edit. Dicklyon (talk) 19:20, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

You only searched from 1970. Cherry-picking date ranges is biased. Using wildcards to spread the results is manipulative. These stats are lies created from selective parameters. They wrote a shit-tom of books between 1815 and 1970, published hundreds of documents. Those European documents are far more valid than your results which limit to modern and primarily Americanised grammar. Charlatan. — Marcus^(talk) 18:44, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

We usually focus on recent decades when discussing usage in sources, but feel free to extend the date range if you think you can get the data to show something other than that most sources don't cap this. Dicklyon (talk) 23:22, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Who is "we"? Show us where wiki policy states to only use recent usage in discussions on sources. In fact, show us any policy that sets limitations on any form of dicussion. Show us any wiki policy that requires us to be biased and ignore evidence over a cetain age. Until then, I'll consider this another lie and yet more contempt for the intelligence of editors that don't adhere to your personal ideals. Fact remains, the 0.0000005% differences expressed by N-grams are beyond trivial, no matter how hard you try to exaggerate them. And the fact that you haven't previously filtered your N-grams searches to only consider post-1970 sources, in multiple RMs, only now for Waterloo, is highly suspicious. Proof, in my opinion, that the usual standard search format is too close for comfort to convince even the lowest common denominator that your results are sincere: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Waterloo+Campaign&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1815&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2CWaterloo%20Campaign%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3BWaterloo%20campaign%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BWaterloo%20Campaign%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BWATERLOO%20CAMPAIGN%3B%2Cc0#t4%3B%2CWaterloo%20Campaign%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3BWaterloo%20campaign%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BWaterloo%20Campaign%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BWATERLOO%20CAMPAIGN%3B%2Cc0 — Marcus^(talk) 00:04, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Yes, there is more info in that late 19th century region, but if you look at it closely ([2], [3]), you see that it's mostly the uses in entries such as "2: Waterloo Campaign" and "3: Waterloo Campaign" and "Polity Waterloo Campaign", which appeared in the index to the section "General List of Works Published by Messrs. Longman, Green, & Co." that was appended to a whole bunch of their books in those years, in which they list some works in title case. So it's best to ignore that bump. After that, it doesn't much matter what year you look from. You are free to look at and analyze the data any way you want, and make a case for caps, but the case is just not there. Also note that 0.00000500% of trigrams in the 1880s is a whole lot less than a smaller fraction of trigrams in recent decades, due to the hugely larger numbers of recent books in the database. Dicklyon (talk) 05:09, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

@SnowFire - "The Campaigns of Napoleon" doesn't appear to be an on-point source". Are you serious? David G. Chandler was and remains one of the most prolific historians of Napoleonic warfare, he is one of the most recognised go-to sources for anyone studying Napoleon, nearly every other book on Napoleon written since 1966 mentions his work in the bibliography, there's just no getting away from him and how much ground he covered in that title. And just to note, he only used the term "Waterloo Campaign" three times in his work, twice capitalised: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hNYWXeVcbkMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22campaigns+of+napoleon%22+waterloo+campaign&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiu4ZCxotHjAhVUQxUIHcS2CTkQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=%22campaigns%20of%20napoleon%22%20waterloo%20campaign&f=false — Marcus^(talk) 00:17, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

I see 4, with 2 capped and 2 not (see lowercase on pages 172 and 1154). Hardly evidence of proper name status. Dicklyon (talk) 01:46, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

1154 is merely an index entry, thus it is not placed in a sentence or used as a title, thus it lacks context to help disseminate usage. — Marcus^(talk) 01:55, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

You mean if an author was treating a term as a proper name he might nevertheless lowercase it in his index? Interesting theory. Dicklyon (talk) 02:01, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

@MarcusBritish:: I was going off of Dicklyon's link, which showed only a single instance of "Waterloo campaign" in an entire book, so I figured something screwy was going on and threw it out. (I haven't read that book.) Checking the link again, I see that this was actually a bogus search, as you noted - Dicklyon's search was for "during Waterloo campaign", but a vanilla search for "Waterloo Campaign" (link) does seem to indicate that the capitalized form is used twice and the lowercased one once, which could easily be an "event"/"proper noun" distinction (which is relevant and an argument in favor of capitalization to me). SnowFire (talk) 02:43, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

I said it was mixed; the point of the link was to take you to a page with lowercase, not to deny that it also had uppercase. But you didn't like that, so you dissed the source. Dicklyon (talk) 03:34, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Oxford English Dictionary

It was suggested above that the OED might have something to say about this. So I got a library card and got onto it to check. They don't list "Waterloo campaign" among the compounds of Waterloo, sadly. They do discuss campaigns as one of the noun definition, like this:

3. Military. The continuance and operations of an army ‘in the field’ for a season or other definite portion of time, or while engaged in one continuous series of military operations constituting the whole, or a distinct part, of a war. (In German Feldzug.)

The name arose in the earlier conditions of warfare, according to which an army remained in quarters (in towns, garrisons, fortresses, or camps) during the winter, and on the approach of summer issued forth into the open country (nella campagna, dans la campagne) or ‘took the field’, until the close of the season again suspended active operations. Hence the name properly signifying the ‘being in the field’, was also applied, now to the season or time during which the army kept the field, and now to the series of operations performed during this time. In the changed conditions of modern warfare, the season of the year is of much less importance, and a campaign has now no direct reference to time or season, but to an expedition or continuous series of operations bearing upon a distinct object, the accomplishment or abandonment of which marks its end, whether in the course of a week or two, or after one or more years. The history of the sense is seen in early Dictionaries; e.g.

1656 T. Blount Glossographia (at cited word) A word much used among Souldiers, by whom the next Campaine is usually taken for the next Summers Expedition of an Army, or its taking the field.

1721 N. Bailey Universal Etymol. Eng. Dict. Campain, [in Military Affairs] the space of time every Year, an Army continues in the Field, during a War.

1730 N. Bailey et al. Dictionarium Britannicum Campain,..a summer's war.

1755 Johnson Dict. Eng. Lang. Campaign, the time for which any army keeps the field, without entering into quarters.

1667 S. Pepys Diary 28 June (1974) VIII. 300 Several commanders that had not money to set them out to the present Campagne.

1693 tr. J. Le Clerc Mem. Count Teckely i. 37 And prepared themselves to open the Campagn in good time.

1702 Clarendon's Hist. Rebellion I. i. 49 After he had made two or three Campaigns..he came in the leisure of the Winter to visit his Friends in England.

1708 Swift Predict. for 1708 8 It will be a Glorious Campaign for the Allies.

1790 R. Beatson Naval & Mil. Mem. II. 218 The want of success in the last campaign.

1850 R. W. Emerson Napoleon in Representative Men vi. 239 In the Russian campaign,..he said, ‘I have two hundred millions in my coffers, and I would give them all for Ney’.

Note that through the 1708 example it was capped (in various spellings), as most important nouns in English were at the time (like Winter and Friends), and that in the 1790 and 1850 examples, including Napoleon's "Russian campaign" it is lowercase, like today. Dicklyon (talk) 20:07, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Case fixing done

I've edited all the above moved articles, aiming for case consistency with MOS:CAPS; but I didn't do much more than "campaign" and "order of battle" and a few other things I noticed here and there, and some link fixing. More eyes on this would be awesome. Dicklyon (talk) 01:20, 14 August 2019 (UTC)